Far be it from me to cast aspersions as to the intent of a sportswriter, that ego-driven know-it-all whose certitude in regards to, well, whatever he or she is covering knows no bounds.
But this week's UK basketball notebook from Mr. Jerry Tipton definitely warrants a little facetime.
You see, as others have also noted, Tipton's lede is a doozy, positing in just two sentences that one recruiting analyst thinks Minnesota's recruiting class is better than UK's (OK, fine), and then in the next breath telling his readers not to "send me any of your inane e-mail messages."
Pardon? Isn't that inanity par for the course? And, quite frankly, aren't those "inane email messages" exactly how 90% of the Sunday "notebook" is compiled? Or did you find out about someone's dying grandpa's last Big Blue wishes through your special "Wildcats Spidey Sense"?
What a douchey thing to write, even for Tipton, whose hate-hate relationship with a large chunk of the Wildcats faithful just continues to bear rotten fruit.
One can only wonder then, on a weekend in which Tipton's "stories" involve Kentucky's coach's lack of a contract and his lack of a top flight recruiting class -- oh, wait, I'm sorry, that was just one analyst's view, I forgot -- what exactly Mr. Tipton wakes up deciding to focus on. And, similarly, what exactly his beef with his job is.
Now I am not one who thinks that a beat writer must be a die-hard fan or should paint a rosy picture of things. Not at all. In fact, I'd arge that a good beat writer is probably not a fan, precisely to cover things with a modicum of objectivity.
But the "inane" rabble's issues with Tipton seem to be that his focus is nearly all negative, or at least faux investigative. Perhaps this is due to the magnitude of the UK program in the burg of Lexington, or maybe he's a "glass half empty, who stole the other half?" type of guy.
Or maybe with the last vestiges of the old regime falling away -- the reassigning of a longtime basketball secretary, which Tipton covered with authority, and the hiring of a coach with no prior Kentucky ties, and therefore no ties to Tipton -- the sportswriter finds himself scrambling for stories with every would-be hack and big blue blogger on the street and feels a little miffed.
Talk about inane.